Child safety seats are too often improperly installed in vehicles, thereby posing serious physical risks to children. The preferred method of securing a safety car seat in a vehicle is to use a LATCH (Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children) anchor system, which was developed to simplify installation of child safety seats. This system uses attachment straps designed for the child safety seat (as opposed to seat belts) to secure the child safety seat to anchors that are permanently attached to the vehicle. The anchors are steel rings or loops located within the crack of a seat. The attachment straps have hooks or other fittings that attach to the anchors. While the LATCH system is more effective than using a conventional seat belt, child safety car seats are still difficult to install for at least two reasons.
The first reason is the fact that anchors are sometimes buried between the automobile seat cushions, and are not easily visible. This can make it difficult to maneuver a hook onto an anchor and/or to release the hook from the anchor.
The second reason, and the more dangerous, is the removal of slack in a loose attachment strap. Slack in the attachment strap decreases the effectiveness of the attachment strap's ability to secure and retain the child safety seat in place within the vehicle. For many individual's it is extremely difficult to tighten the attachment strap. As a result, every year many children are needlessly injured or killed during otherwise minor vehicular accidents because of the incorrect installation of the child's safety seat.
Therefore, a need exists for a system and devices for assisting in the installation of a child safety seat with first, the securement of the attachment strap to the vehicle's anchors and second the tightening of the attachment strap.